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Dr. Christian is a professor and chairperson of the English department at Florida International University, and affiliate faculty in FIU’s African and African Diaspora and Women's and Gender Studies programs. He is author of The Harlem Renaissance and the Idea of a New Negro Reader and lectures and publishes generally on twentieth-century, African American literary and print culture. His varied leadership roles included a term as Associate Provost (at Wheaton College, MA) and as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the RI Council for the Humanities. Dr. Christian was also a member of the planning committee for the annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading. A former actor and (occasional) director, he has performed in a production of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner and co-directed a production of Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf.
Many of us knew Dr. Christian during his years teaching at Wheaton College, serving on the board of the RI Council for the Humanities, and lending his many talents to the annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading, and we are delighted to welcome him back for the weekend. I had a chance to talk with him this week about his history with Langston Hughes, how Hughes and his work newly matter to us today, and why the annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading so perfectly (and literally) “embodies” Hughes’s most essential legacies.
His introduction to Hughes came during his middle school years, when, as part of the youth ministry of a Missionary Baptist church he had joined, he was tapped to recite the Hughes poem, “Life Is Fine.” “I had done some oratorical things in my early youth, so this opportunity didn’t come out of nowhere, but I was just really moved by the reaction of the congregation. And that poem has become a sort of staple for me to recite, and I have probably recited it close to a hundred times, now that I’m fifty, and each time, I get deeper and deeper and deeper into the themes and expressions he’s trying to capture. The poem became a cool way to understand his art as an interactive, authentic, engaged sharing of humanity – experiencing the travails of life, and vocalizing [that experience] so that it’s art, but also shared experience.”
As a scholar, he says, he had not written on Hughes, but the first time he attended the annual Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading (when it was held at the RISD Museum), “I thought, wow, just to know that Langston Hughes could bring this diversity of age, race, et cetera, together, and people were just together having a good old time, it pulled me in.“ A conversation afterwards with founder Ann Edmunds Clanton led to her asking him to participate as a guest lecturer at multiple subsequent readings, and in more recent years, when April Brown and Kai Cameron began to produce the reading, he was invited to serve on the steering committee for the event. “I wanted to serve in any capacity, not just to be ‘the intellectual,’ because that’s also the way I’ve always thought of Hughes, that his poetry was his art, but it was also about his commitment to humanity in general, and to Black people in particular, within his own communities where he lived in and also for the larger United States. So being on the steering committee was wonderful, but for several years I was also an usher, and if I were still in Providence, I would make sure that I was still serving as an usher. There is a kind of profound sense that this man who is now revered, and even when he was alive had gotten a great deal of acclaim and visibility, still felt like the kind of person you could have a fried fish sandwich with, who was not putting on airs, and who tried to treat people with a great deal of respect and dignity. It’s an element of his character that people know about, but don’t often speak about, frankly, because his artistry was so engrossing. But he was also just a cool dude!”
In speaking about Hughes’s legacy, he cites the annual Reading as emblematic of the dynamism that characterizes the way Hughes is remembered and celebrated. “MLKing gets lots of memorials and breakfasts throughout the year, and there’s a version of that that happens for Hughes, too, but in different ways, it’s a bit more active, I would argue. There’s a kind of voicing that he helps Black America do – and especially young people. The annual Reading is a great way to tap into that active sensibility that was Hughes’s, and replicate it – and there are people across the country who are doing the same kind of thing. It’s a beautiful way to remember him, it’s about the sustaining power of language and voice, and it’s identificatory, in that you can pick it up and find yourself in it, and you’re quickly part of the conversation once you get a few poems in you, from the long, complex poems to the simple ones.” He ended our conversation with an expression of gratitude to Ann Edmunds Clanton, April Brown, Kai Cameron, and all of those who have worked over several decades to keep the Reading alive, and an exhortation for all of us to keep up the work. “It’s too beautiful to let it go by the wayside.”
We agree! If you do, too, please join us in supporting this beloved annual Reading, returning to PPL in February, by getting your tickets to “Langston’s Harlem Nights: A Rent Party Fundraiser,” happening Saturday, November 18 at Machines & Magnets! Details are here. And join us in the coming weeks for additional programs with Blackearth Collective & Lab, including a Beading Circle and Poetry Open Hours, see the list of events here!
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